Love at First Mate - Badlands Territory

“This you?” I turn, pointing to the image.

“Yes,” he grunts, not elaborating, but I see the angst in his eyes.

I want to know everything about him, why he was raised by his grandmother. The tragedy that Josephine mentioned, but now doesn’t feel like the right time. So, I set the picture back down and look out the small window through the thick forest behind the cabin.

My heart is pounding and my skin prickles as I feel his hands run down my shoulders and grip the tops of my arms. A whimper-moan sticks in my throat as his breath heats my ear and his hands return to my shoulders, then they are wrapped around my neck, making me shiver and my clit starts to pulse.

“I never wanted to find my mate.” His words are a low rumble that traces through me as his fingers tighten around the flesh of my neck until my next breath takes deliberate effort. “Do you feel that? That vibration between us?”

I nod, because his hands encircling my neck are making my eyes feel funny and there’s a prickling of heat on my cheeks.

“That’s the truth. You’ll never be away from me. You are part of me now. Ingrained in me by your very being. You are mine. Something I never wanted, and now, I don’t think I can live without.”

His words are sharp and hard, like they hurt him, but there’s a softness there as well. A vulnerability that makes me want him more. Makes me feel something I didn’t believe was true. Like he was made just for me. Waited just for me. And as crazy as this is, I feel like this is meant to be.

His hands own my breath, my life force fragile in a grip that could take me in a split second, and yet my inner muscles clench, another wave of wet lust soaking the slip of fabric between my legs, and my head is spinning.

I succumb, give in to the collar of fingers around my neck and feel like I’m starting to float as I bring my hands to his forearms in a last-ditch attempt to keep myself upright, my pulse throbbing behind my eyeballs. They feel like they are beginning to bulge out of my head and I open my mouth, a desperate choking sound all I have left.

As the room spins, dark stars flash before my eyes, my neck suddenly free as gasping breaths cool the burning in my lungs and the next thing I know, I am in his arms. His massive hand is at the back of my head, his arm looping under my knees and I feel the rhythmic movement of his steps, followed by the softness of a pillow under my head.

His lips crush to mine, hard, painful, and I know in that instant I’ve never truly been kissed before.

He’s dangerous, I feel it in parts of me that don’t lie.

I want to throw myself headlong into the fire, the stinging, burning embers dotting my flesh, knowing soon I will be mere ash, his breath blowing me into the forest breeze never to be seen again.

I press my lips upward, needing more. The scruff of his beard scrapes my chin and a flurry of gut clenching, painfully wondrous muscle spasms wrack my body as my heart leaps and bounces in my chest.

Arousal pumps through my blood, racing my pulse as I reach up and around his massive shoulders, feeling childlike under the broad hardness of this enormous man-beast. This is crazy. I don’t know him, and yet, in some kind of past-life, ancient primal way, I know him more than I’ve ever known anyone before.

As we kiss, the rumble coming from him darkens and I feel his muscles tremble and bulge under my fingers. He releases our kiss, my bottom lip caught between pointed teeth that feel too sharp to be human.

His cock is resting behind the fabric of his jeans, against my outer thigh, and it’s as if every part of him is engorged. My insides spasm, some primal part of me roaring in anger that this beast is not yet inside of me.

Taking me. Claiming me in the way only animals know how.

He rocks back, my hands gliding down his shoulders as the fabric of his shirt strains to withhold the same thing that his eyes tell me he is battling.

His beautiful lips pull back against his white teeth and I see it then. Incisors that look closer to canines, and there’s a golden red flash in his eyes as I let my fingertip drift upward, resting on the rock hard muscle in his jaw, daring whatever parts of him he wants me to have right now to come forth.

A week ago, I believed shifters were a pleasurable fantasy in books and movies. How life can spin on a moment as I swallow hard, driving my thigh upward into Ragnar’s thick erection. Our eyes are locked together in some sort of human-animal battle for supremacy.